The threat of attack on military and civilian targets employing biological agents is of growing concern. Various technologies are being developed for the detection and identification of such agents. The technologies are broadly classified into standoff/early warning sensors, triggers, air sampler/concentrators, core detection techniques and signal processing algorithms. While several technologies are very good at detecting some agents or classes of agents, no one single technology detects all chemical and biological agents with a sufficient level of sensitivity and specificity due to the diverse range of agents that need to be detected and identified. The agents range from simple inorganic or organic chemicals to complex bio-engineered microorganisms. The agents may be in vapor form to solid form. The toxicity level may also vary between 10−3 grams per person to 10−12 grams per person. To further complicate the process of detecting such agents, the agents with the highest toxicity level are more difficult to detect with the speed and accuracy needed to effectively counter the agents.
Some prior attempts to solve the above problems integrate a small sub-set of the different sensor technologies into a network, but rely heavily on operator inputs and interpretation capabilities. They are not capable of autonomous operation nor do they provide automated output decisions. Such integrated sets of different sensors also do not provide a high probability of detection in combination with a low probability of false alarm.